Taking a cue from big start-ups like OYO, Flipkart and Ola, at least 25 Indian entrepreneurs were line up before Japanese Venture Capitalists and investors from September 4-5 in Tokyo to raise a capital worth $1-10 million.
The National Association of Software and Service Companies had shortlisted the 25 start-ups whose founders held a face-to-face meeting with the Japanese VC community. The funding for Indian start-ups, as per sources, would be held at the Series A, B or C levels. The Morning Standard takes a look at three Bengaluru-based start-ups in food, recruitment and finance sectors, which currently look forward to Japanese investments.
Skillenza
Founded in 2014 by Subhendu Panigrahi, Prashant Koirala and Rajesh Rai, Skillenza is an online recruitment platform that helps companies hire talents in new technology such as Machine Learning, through a unique ‘challenging solving’ mechanism.
The job seekers are expected to solve challenges paused by companies within a stipulated time frame, to do away with the conventional hiring process, saving time for both the employers as well as the job seekers in turn.
“We’re here not only to explore funding but to engage with Japanese enterprise communities that want to hire talented Indian IT engineers. So, as a company, we see many possibilities in Japan,” said the founders.
“There are various innovations we are bringing into the online recruitment process in India. One method is the introduction of the certification process wherein the users would have to appear in various tests and the enterprises could hire the talent on the basis of the job seeker’s performance,” said Yashodhara Satpathy, head of marketing, Skillenza.
Skillenza founders are hopeful of a likely investment from the Japanese VC community. The firm has already raised $2 million in the last four years.
Aibono
Founded in 2013 by Vivek Rajkumar, an IIT-Madras graduate, Aibono claims to be India’s first Artificial Intelligence-backed fresh food aggregator that connects farmers directly with retailers, pioneering the seed-to-plate platforms. Aibono has already secured $2.5 million funding from various Bengaluru-based VCs, attracting attention to the food tech space.
Aibono aims to help farmers attain high and good quality yields by providing them with reliable science-backed data as well as feedback from retailers. The Silicon Valley-based start-up hopes to help thousands of farmers connect with retailers going forward while expanding its operations globally.
Vivek, who worked as the team lead at Procter & Gamble, comes from a family of farmers. He launched Aibono in an effort to reduce the common problems faced by agriculturists, including less production, perishability of fruits and vegetables and their storage. Aibono, which largely caters to the farming community in Bengaluru, is also planning to expand to the other cities.
MoneyOnClick
A one-year-old start-up that has raised $2.15 million in capital from the VCs, MoneyOnClick is a fin-tech start-up that lends money to consumers who are unable to apply for formal banking loans or do not fall under the ambit of NBFCs. Vishal Chopra and Himanshu Gupta, founders of MoneyOnClick, earlier worked for another fintech start-up, Lendingkart.
“We are targeting customers who are currently not served by formal banks and NBFCs and hence end up taking gold loans or loans from informal moneylenders who charge atrocious interest rates. Using advanced ML/AI-based underwriting and in-house technology platform, we aim to provide unsecured personal loans to these customers while keeping very low default rates,” Vishal Chopra, co-founder, MoneyOnClick said on Linkedln. MoneyOnClick boasts of a line of investors including Kalaari Capital, Narayan Murthy and Nandan Nilekani.
Seed-to-plate platform
Aibono claims to be India’s first Artificial Intelligence-backed fresh food aggregator that connects farmers directly with retailers, pioneering the seed-to-plate platforms. It has already secured $2.5 million from various Bengaluru-based VCs, attracting attention to the food tech space
Talent hunt
Skillenza is an online recruitment platform that helps companies hire talents in new technology such as Machine Learning, through a unique ‘challenging solving’ mechanism. The job seekers are expected to solve challenges paused by companies within a stipulated time frame, to do away with the conventional hiring process.